Frankenstein

Historical and Biographical Approaches:

“Frankenstein”

Author: Mary Shelly

Published on 1 Jan. 1818

Original Name: Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus

Classic Gothic and Romanic Novel, with a concern to the “over-reaching” of scientism in the Industrial Revolution.

Timeline 1818

Shelly is only 21! And these are the most advanced technologies !!

So you can see how imaginative Shelly is.

Inspiration

During the snowy summer of 1816 (the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 had blocked the sky) Shelly visited Lord Byron

In the visit, Byron challenged and John William Polidori (Byron’s physician) and Shelly to compose the scariest tale

Mary Shelly came up the idea of Frankenstein, Byron wrote a fragment based on the vampire legend he heard in the Balkans, from this Polidori later developed the novel The Vampire.

“ How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?” -Shelly

Thus, two of the most proliferated horror themes were created in the same

contest!They both won!

The unnaturalness and lifelessness of the “mini-ice age” after the eruption of Mt. Tambora also provided Mary Shelly with the inspiration of the arctic setting in the novel.

Victor Frankenstein

To critics, Frankenstein is akin to some scientists of our own day, who attempt and achieve developments mostly because they have the technical ability to do so

In this sense, Victor Frankenstein is surprisingly similar to another great inventor in history, Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci used to sneak into crypts to dissect corpses to study them.

Although he had expressed in his notes his abhorrence of war, he also designed some of the most advanced weapons in his time

Frankenstein

Many mistook the name Frankenstein as the monster’s name, the fact is that he was never named

Instead he was called: 'creature', 'demon', 'fiend', and 'wretch'

Victor, his creator and the real Frankenstein, called it: ‘Devil’, ‘Vile insect’, ‘Abhorred monster’, 'wretched devil' and 'abhorred devil'

Victor Frankenstein and the monster

Victor had regarded the monster as evil right from the start to the end, that’s strange in two ways

First, he failed to see the eeriness of the monster all the time he was composing it

Second, he also failed to consider his own responsibility and blamed everything on the monster

Therefore, the common mistake might not be mistaken after all, for Victor Frankenstein can be seen as the true monster

Historical Background of Frankenstein

•Frankenstein was published in the last years of the reign of George III. Its author, Mary Shelley, was born in 1797. Both the American and the French Revolutions were things of the past.

Portrait of George III. He is widely remembered for

two things: losing the American colonies and

going mad.

•It must be admitted that the social and political picture in England during Mary Shelly’s years would have been enough to drive many sensitive and idealistic young people into radical thinking and action.

Portrait of Mary Shelley

“Dark satanic mills” were proliferating all over England

Enclosure Acts were driving small landowners, tenant farmers, and agricultural workers off their lands and into the slums of industrial cities; laborers everywhere endured horrible working conditions with no job security and faced the indifference and hostility of a new and growing capitalist class.

The influences of her parents on Mary Shelley

•Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), and the novel The Wrongs of Woman, in which she wrote: "We cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavor to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us."

"Mary Wollstonecraft," by John Opie (circa

1797).

The influences of her parents on Mary Shelley

•Mary Shelley's father was the writer and political journalist William Godwin, who became famous with his work Political Justice (1793). Godwin had revolutionary attitudes to most social institutions.

Portrait of William Godwin

• In her childhood Mary Shelley was left to educate herself amongst her father's intellectual circle. She published her first poem at the age of ten. At the age of 16 she ran away to France and Switzerland with the poet Percy Shelley. They married in 1816 after Shelley's first wife had committed suicide by drowning. Their first child, a daughter, died in Venice, Italy, a few years later. In the History Of Six Weeks' Tour (1817) the Shelley jointly recorded their life. Thereafter they returned to England and Mary gave birth to a son, William.

• In 1818 the Shelley left England for Italy, where they remained until Shelley's death - he drowned in 1822 in the Bay of Spezia near Livorno. In 1819 Mary suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of William - she had also lost a daughter the previous year. In 1822 she had a dangerous miscarriage. Of their children only one, Percy Florence, survived infancy. In 1823 she returned with her son to England, determined not to-re-marry. She devoted herself to his welfare and education and continued her career as a professional writer.

Interestingly, few of these radical tendencies are evident in Frankenstein. Between the age of 15 and 17, Mary visited her middle-class friends in Dundee, where seems to give her a pleasant contrast to the polar opposite of her normal milieu.

The 1st edition of Frankenstein in 1831. Mary

Shelley used the Frankenstein and Clerval families in her novel to

hearken back to Baxters.

Biographical Features in Frankenstein

•Already interested in science in her early years, Mary Shelley shared with her husband’s fascination with the natural sciences. Hence, we read the detailed accounts of the creation of the monster in her novel. The book cover of another

edition of Frankenstein.

Biographical Features in Frankenstein

However, Frankenstein’s chemistry is, to quote James Rieger, “switched-on magic, souped-up alchemy, the electrification of Agrippa and Paracelsus…[H]e wants the forbidden…. He is a criminal magician who employs up-to-dates tools” (xxvii).

Biographical Features in Frankenstein •Of course, to some extent, Mary Shelley is employing certain features of contemporary Gothic romances. But she departs from the stock formulas of the genre. One notable biographical detail may be found in the geography, topography, and climate of the settings of the novel.

Picture of black mill factories in the 19th century

Biographical Features in Frankenstein

Mary Shelley was more interested in creating an “arctic of the mind” than in describing glaciers and ice floes scientifically. She was intimately acquainted with both the terrain and climatic conditions in the Alpine regions where she and Percy Shelley lived.

Biographical Features in Frankenstein

Although Frankenstein is famous for being a horror novel, the world in the fiction was deeply ingrained with Shelly’s belief of conventional sexual morality and family piety

E.g. The expectation of conventional marriage between Victor and his cousin Elizabeth

Family bonding: Victor’s friend Clerval

Plot overview• I N A SERIES OF LETTERS, Robert Walton, the captain of a ship bound for

the North Pole, recounts to his sister back in England the progress of his dangerous mission. Successful early on, the mission is soon interrupted by seas full of impassable ice. Trapped, Walton encounters Victor Frankenstein, who has been traveling by dog-drawn sledge across the ice and is weakened by the cold. Walton takes him aboard ship, helps nurse him back to health, and hears the fantastic tale of the monster that Frankenstein created.

• Victor first describes his early life in Geneva. At the end of a blissful childhood spent in the company of Elizabeth Lavenza (his cousin in the 1818 edition, his adopted sister in the 1831edition) and friend Henry Clerval, Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry. There, he is consumed by the desire to discover the secret of life and, after several years of research, becomes convinced that he has found it.

Plot overview

• Armed with the knowledge he has long been seeking, Victor spends months feverishly fashioning a creature out of old body parts. One climactic night, in the secrecy of his apartment, he brings his creation to life. When he looks at the monstrosity that he has created, however, the sight horrifies him. After a fitful night of sleep, interrupted by the specter of the monster looming over him, he runs into the streets, eventually wandering in remorse. Victor runs into Henry, who has come to study at the university, and he takes his friend back to his apartment. Though the monster is gone, Victor falls into a feverish illness.

Plot overview

• Sickened by his horrific deed, Victor prepares to return to Geneva, to his family, and to health. Just before departing Ingolstadt, however, he receives a letter from his father informing him that his youngest brother, William, has been murdered. Grief-stricken, Victor hurries home. While passing through the woods where William was strangled, he catches sight of the monster and becomes convinced that the monster is his brother’s murderer. Arriving in Geneva, Victor finds that Justine Moritz, a kind, gentle girl who had been adopted by the Frankenstein household, has been accused. She is tried, condemned, and executed, despite her assertions of innocence. Victor grows despondent, guilty with the knowledge that the monster he has created bears responsibility for the death of two innocent loved ones.

• Hoping to ease his grief, Victor takes a vacation to the mountains. While he is alone one day, crossing an enormous glacier, the monster approaches him. The monster admits to the murder of William but begs for understanding. Lonely, shunned, and forlorn, he says that he struck out at William in a desperate attempt to injure Victor, his cruel creator. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him, a monster equally grotesque to serve as his sole companion.

Plot overview

• Victor refuses at first, horrified by the prospect of creating a second monster. The monster is eloquent and persuasive, however, and he eventually convinces Victor. After returning to Geneva, Victor heads for England, accompanied by Henry, to gather information for the creation of a female monster. Leaving Henry in Scotland, he secludes himself on a desolate island in the Orkneys and works reluctantly at repeating his first success. One night, struck by doubts about the morality of his actions, Victor glances out the window to see the monster glaring in at him with a frightening grin. Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation. The monster, enraged, vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on Victor’s wedding night.

Plot overview• Later that night, Victor takes a boat out onto a lake and dumps the remains of the

second creature in the water. The wind picks up and prevents him from returning to the island. In the morning, he finds himself ashore near an unknown town. Upon landing, he is arrested and informed that he will be tried for a murder discovered the previous night. Victor denies any knowledge of the murder, but when shown the body, he is shocked to behold his friend Henry Clerval, with the mark of the monster’s fingers on his neck. Victor falls ill, raving and feverish, and is kept in prison until his recovery, after which he is acquitted of the crime.

• Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears the monster’s warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To be cautious, he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. While he awaits the monster, he hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the monster had been hinting at killing his new bride, not himself. Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later. Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to finding the monster and exacting his revenge, and he soon departs to begin his quest.

Plot overview

• Victor tracks the monster ever northward into the ice. In a dogsled chase, Victor almost catches up with the monster, but the sea beneath them swells and the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this point, Walton encounters Victor, and the narrative catches up to the time of Walton’s fourth letter to his sister.

• Walton tells the remainder of the story in another series of letters to his sister. Victor, already ill when the two men meet, worsens and dies shortly thereafter. When Walton returns, several days later, to the room in which the body lies, he is startled to see the monster weeping over Victor. The monster tells Walton of his immense solitude, suffering, hatred, and remorse. He asserts that now that his creator has died, he too can end his suffering. The monster then departs for the northernmost ice to die.

Themes

• Dangerous Knowledge

• The pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of Frankenstein, as Victor attempts to surge beyond accepted human limits and access the secret of life. Likewise, Robert Walton attempts to surpass previous human explorations by endeavoring to reach the North Pole. This ruthless pursuit of knowledge, of the light (see “Light and Fire”), proves dangerous, as Victor’s act of creation eventually results in the destruction of everyone dear to him, and Walton finds himself perilously trapped between sheets of ice. Whereas Victor’s obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his death, Walton ultimately pulls back from his treacherous mission, having learned from Victor’s example how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be.

Themes

• Sublime Nature

• The sublime natural world, embraced by Romanticism (late eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth century) as a source of unrestrained emotional experience for the individual, initially offers characters the possibility of spiritual renewal. Mired in depression and remorse after the deaths of William and Justine, for which he feels responsible, Victor heads to the mountains to lift his spirits. Likewise, after a hellish winter of cold and abandonment, the monster feels his heart lighten as spring arrives. The influence of nature on mood is evident throughout the novel, but for Victor, the natural world’s power to console him wanes when he realizes that the monster will haunt him no matter where he goes. By the end, as Victor chases the monster obsessively, nature, in the form of the Arctic desert, functions simply as the symbolic backdrop for his primal struggle against the monster.

Themes

• Monstrosity

• Obviously, this theme pervades the entire novel, as the monster lies at the center of the action. Eight feet tall and hideously ugly, the monster is rejected by society. However, his monstrosity results not only from his grotesque appearance but also from the unnatural manner of his creation, which involves the secretive animation of a mix of stolen body parts and strange chemicals. He is a product not of collaborative scientific effort but of dark, supernatural workings.

Motifs

• Passive Women

• For a novel written by the daughter of an important feminist, Frankenstein is strikingly devoid of strong female characters. The novel is littered with passive women who suffer calmly and then expire: Caroline Beaufort is a self-sacrificing mother who dies taking care of her adopted daughter; Justine is executed for murder, despite her innocence; the creation of the female monster is aborted by Victor because he fears being unable to control her actions once she is animated; Elizabeth waits, impatient but helpless, for Victor to return to her, and she is eventually murdered by the monster. One can argue that Shelley renders her female characters so passive and subjects them to such ill treatment in order to call attention to the obsessive and destructive behavior that Victor and the monster exhibit.

Symbols

• Light and Fire

• “What could not be expected in the country of eternal light?” asks Walton, displaying a faith in, and optimism about, science. In Frankenstein, light symbolizes knowledge, discovery, and enlightenment. The natural world is a place of dark secrets, hidden passages, and unknown mechanisms; the goal of the scientist is then to reach light. The dangerous and more powerful cousin of light is fire. The monster’s first experience with a still-smoldering flame reveals the dual nature of fire: he discovers excitedly that it creates light in the darkness of the night, but also that it harms him when he touches it.

• The presence of fire in the text also brings to mind the full title of Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. The Greek god Prometheus gave the knowledge of fire to humanity and was then severely punished for it. Victor, attempting to become a modern Prometheus, is certainly punished, but unlike fire, his “gift” to humanity—knowledge of the secret of life—remains a secret.

Different Frankensteins

Boris Karloff

Robert De Niro

Andy Warhols

Frankenstein - The Musical

Batman as Frankenstein

Other Frankensteins

Movies

1. Frankenstein (1994)  aka "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" - USA (complete title) 

-Love scene

2. Frankenstein (1931) 

3. Young Frankenstein (1974) 

4. Gods and Monsters (1998)  aka "The Father of Frankenstein" - USA (working title) 

5. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)  aka "Frankenstein Lives Again!" - USA (working title) aka "The Return of Frankenstein" - USA (working title) aka "The Bride of Frankenstein" - USA (poster title)

Modern Frankensteins

Like all great literature masterpieces, “Frankenstein” was topical in its era yet also contains something universal in time

It questions human’s unending search for technical advancement and power, especially in the age of science

Victor Frankenstein represents the part of human beings that are capable of unlimited ingenuity, yet are often found lacking in being responsible for the things we created

Theater

The Electric theatre March 2005Frensham Heights Theatre July 2006The Edinburgh Fringe August 2006

Adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel by Ian Nichols

Awarded 4 star reviews in The Scotsman.

In our own day, those who express great caution about human cloning need not base that caution on religious grounds alone

As Shelly has shown though Victor Frankenstein, the inability to be responsible for one’s creation may present the greatest evil of all.

“If researches manage to create living cells from scratch . . . . Scientists are close enough to create life in the lab that is time to start a public debate about what that would mean - for traditional views of the sanctity of life as well as for whether the creators will be able to control their creations”

From “Researchers Exploring, ‘What is Life?’ Seek to Create a Living Cell”, Wall Street

Journal

Related Sources and Links about Frankenstein

Mary Shelley http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mshelley.htm

Full e-text of Frankenstein

http://bioearthfuels.org/ebooks/shelley-frankenstein.pdf

Fred Botting, ed. Frankenstein: Mary Shelley. New York :St. Martin's Press, 1995.